<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Our Virtues Uncounted by TashaVick87</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29383731">Our Virtues Uncounted</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TashaVick87/pseuds/TashaVick87'>TashaVick87</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Succession (TV 2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Introspection, Porn with Feelings, Post S2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:00:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,604</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29383731</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TashaVick87/pseuds/TashaVick87</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It pains him to leave whenever she orders it, but he does. Seeing her every day is the highlight of what always ends up being a battle cut into little pieces, segments of boardroom bickering, watching her excel at what she does, owning the unbelievably dull trudge through the mess left behind by the Logan Roy Express - get off now folks because the conductor is dead and the tracks are only half-built.</p><p>She is the only giver in his life, and won’t allow him to give back. She doesn’t verbalize as much, but he figures her dismissals, especially the one of the previous day, are a sign.</p><p>The precipice of something, that’s what he thought they were on. Now, he wants nothing better than to drink himself into oblivion, winces at the fact that that probably doesn’t make him any better than Kendall. The voice in his head sounds an awful lot like Gerri.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gerri Kellman/Roman "Romulus" Roy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Our Virtues Uncounted</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>6 months post Kendall's press conference, it's time for Logan's sentencing. Gerri and Roman deal with it, each in their own way.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Something keeps thrumming inside him, echoing those well known, ancient words of self-doubt, telling him a cage, right now, would be all he deserves. He was told he liked it once, but he now seems to look for it in every aspect of his fucked up existence, the alleged joy he’s supposed to be feeling replaced by nothing but a crumbly static in his chest.</p><p>His father is going to jail for the rest of his life and Kendall is miles deep in a pile of Bolivia's finest with Naomi by his side. The two of them like a pair of mothmen, wandering the elite watering holes of NY, acting like they're above everyone else, ridding the world of the big bad Logan Roy, an old man with a fucked up brain and dubious past. Like the Pierce clan hasn’t always been the other side of that fecal subway token. Good work team, the evil has been defeated in that lovely, press-palatable way! What a joke.</p><p>Shiv and her soon to be ex pissant of a husband are another thorn in his side, the ache in his gut bigger because he actually misses the ginger bitch, misses all of them, even Connor, the would-be president of the hell hole that is America. They all probably deserve no better.</p>
<hr/><p>She’d stayed home to watch Logan’s sentencing. Anger coiling at the base of her throat like venom for the past six months, she just wanted to savor the moment.</p><p>But guilt was a fickle thing, one never knowing when it will strike.</p><p>It does now, as she’s instructing her driver to speed towards Roman’s penthouse because he’s apparently turned off his phone for the first time in his entire life.</p><p>It’s payback for shutting him out for the day, and she knows it, but can’t afford to think further than the hurtling concrete under her car, the slight heart palpitations rising up her throat which she attempts to squash down with a lukewarm sip of Evian.</p>
<hr/><p>He showers until he feels like his entire epidermis is flaking off, and as he gets out and nearly slips and cracks his head on the edge of the marble counter, he concentrates on the redness of his skin, the way it reminds him of that time he was nine and fell asleep in the sun, waiting for someone to pick him up after soccer practice.</p><p>It was Connor he woke up to, surprisingly, his idiotic face weirdly happy his brother was in hospital. He didn’t put two and two together until he saw Logan standing at the foot of his bed.</p><p>‘‘Couldn’t handle the heat huh, boy? Literally.’’</p><p>He’d clearly been drinking, but Roman took the words to heart. Always take the heat, always chew the fuck out of the ice, even if it seems wholly impossible, there will always be someone who can hack it, and it might as well be you, one way or another.</p><p>He presses down on the abused flesh now, watches it turn bright, like an absolving halo, just like it did back then when Logan crushed his meaty fingers against his son’s forearm.</p><p>The nurses turned a blind eye and Roman followed suit. No one ever asked, and he never told. A creed to live by.</p>
<hr/><p>She bypasses the doorman - being one of the few people always allowed up at any time. She rings the bell, but when there’s no answer, she lets herself in, further angered by the fact his door was unlocked. She knows, on a rational level, that his entire building was Fort Knox, but still, he’s a hated Roy heir, a little caution never hurt anyone.</p><p>She refrains from calling out his name, teeth biting into her lower lip, pulling at a bit of chapped skin. The copper taste nudges her into a sort of frenzy her chest battles to tamp down.</p><p>A trail of clothes leads the way to his bedroom, and she sees a half-empty bottle of Don Julio in the middle of the rug.</p><p>It’s all she can do to stop herself from running into the bathroom to check on him. Images of him choking on his own vomit or slipping and breaking his neck don’t do much to calm her.</p><p>When she hears movement from the other side of the door, she takes a deep breath of relief, starts absentmindedly picking up his clothes, assembling them into a neat pile, shoes aligned next to the bed.</p><p>For lack of anything else to do, she pours herself a drink and sits down to wait.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He knows she’s there. When he heard her footsteps, he ran the shower again just so he’d have an excuse to hide for a bit longer.</p><p>The impossibly anxious way he wants to run out and greet her is precisely what keeps him inside.</p><p>The six months of being fucking Robin to her Batman have been anything but easily explained, and she did not do much to help the confusion his mind seemed to reside in.</p><p>It pains him to leave whenever she orders it, but he does. Seeing her every day is the highlight of what always ends up being a battle cut into little pieces, segments of boardroom bickering, watching her excel at what she does, owning the unbelievably dull trudge through the mess left behind by the Logan Roy Express - get off now folks because the conductor is dead and the tracks are only half-built.</p><p>She is the only giver in his life, and won’t allow him to give back. She doesn’t verbalize as much, but he figures her dismissals, especially the one of the previous day, are a sign.</p><p>The precipice of something, that’s what he thought they were on. Now, he wants nothing better than to drink himself into oblivion, winces at the fact that that probably doesn’t make him any better than Kendal. The voice in his head sounds an awful lot like Gerri.</p><p>He steadies his stride, walks out into the bedroom, perversely interested in what she’ll do when he comes out naked.</p><p>For all their dalliances, for all the words she used to get him off, the nights she watched him writhe in front of her smeared in his own cum - squeezing her own legs together, trying to show she was above it - he thinks this will be the last straw, the moment she runs or stays.</p><p>He’s terrified.</p>
<hr/><p>‘‘Yo, boss lady. I thought we were having separate slumber parties tonight? I feel a little exposed here.’’</p><p>She arches her eyebrow, taking another sip of her drink.</p><p>‘‘Lock your door next time, I really don’t want to have to explain to the whole world when some rabid relic from days gone by comes to murder you in your sleep because of a bone they had to pick with your now very unreachable father. Okay?’’</p><p>He slaps a palm to his chest, a shocked, dramatic look on his face.</p><p>‘‘Is this care? For my wellbeing? Why Ms. Kellman, that is highly unprofessional of you, I am your subordinate.’’</p><p>‘‘Says the naked field mouse.’’, she fires back, unphased.</p><p>‘‘Naked in its own field, as it were, I believe. Whereas you let yourself in without so much as a second thought. I could have been in the middle of fucking my way through half the Knicks cheerleading squad.’’</p><p>She smirks, the mirth not really reaching her eyes and he can see he’s poked the bear enough, starts planning his retreat.</p><p>‘‘Listen to me, and listen to me carefully - <em>Romulus.</em> Your phone-’’, she pauses to throw it his way, having found it on the bed, ‘‘-is never to be turned off.’’</p><p>‘‘Ah, the leash extends to that then, does it?’’</p><p>She looks taken aback by that.</p><p>‘‘Excuse me?’’</p><p>‘‘Well, you know, the little tether at the end of which I’m supposed to prance about  around you, like a show pony or a particularly hyper pooch. I thought it was only verbal, and only to be used during work hours, reining in the second in command. Or when you feel like getting wet then finishing yourself off when I’m not looking. Apparently, it even seems to extend to being at your beck and call when you tell me to fuck off, which is in effect what you did yesterday.’’</p><p>He can feel his face drop, the mask he had managed to scrape together during the few minutes in the bathroom falling swiftly. Hers slides off too, the dark circles around her eyes now prominent, a lost look in the deep blues. Until said look dissolves and she lifts herself up and stalks over to him.</p><p>He balks a little, before he stops himself, stands his ground.</p><p>‘‘Why did you think I said I wanted to be alone? It was a moment to myself, Rome, a moment to let myself fee how happy – yes, happy- I was. It wasn’t about not wanting to be with you, it was sheltering you from my own fucking reaction. ‘‘</p><p>‘‘From fucking what? Whooping for joy when the last gavel fell? Hell, I was so close to popping a bottle of Dom right now.’’</p><p>‘‘Yeah, I can see that. But the fact remains you ‘‘popped’’ a half a bottle of tequila instead. You’re hurting, and among other things, I wanted to give you the chance to do that in private.’’</p><p>When what she should have done is realize that their symbiotic partnership was so co-dependent that neither of them would like that option.</p><p>She needed to stop making decisions for the both of them.</p><p>‘‘Put some clothes on.’’, she breathes out, her fingers running softly through his wet hair.</p><p>‘‘No.’’</p><p>He never disobeyed her, and the simple little word made her incongruently proud of him. She downs her drink and walks back to her seat, pondering her next move.</p><p>She can see he’s hard, but does a great job of ignoring it, yet another step in their simple routine – back when she thought he wanted it that way, the verbal abuse perfected to a tee, to the very second he came all over her floors and she was so wet she had to throw him out on his ass as quickly as she could.</p><p> She now sees clearly his preferences have shifted closer to what hers are. And maybe it was time for the hypocrisy on her end to stop.</p>
<hr/><p>‘‘Do you know why it was only ever: fully clothed, on the floor, at least six feet away from me, preferably with your back turned?’’</p><p>Summing up most of their encounters in such a clinical, cold way helps abate his hard-on and he shakes his head dumbly, feeling like an idiot in the middle of his own room, secretly aching to wrap his robe around himself.</p><p>Instead, he bounces onto the mattress, eyes fixed on the ceiling.</p><p>‘‘I suppose you’re gonna tell me?’’</p><p>‘‘Distance. Safety. Do you even know how much it costs me to say those words to you?’’</p><p>He snaps up on the bed, tilts his head in question.</p><p>‘‘I-I thought you liked it.’’</p><p>She shakes her, head, slightly disappointed.</p><p>‘‘I gave you what you seemed to need in the moment, Rome. But if you think  for one minute that I believe you’re worthless, that you’re any of the things you so seem to want to hear from me, then maybe I misjudged you.’’</p><p>She looks infinitely sad as she says this, reaching for her purse, and he thinks she’s about to leave, panic filling his chest at the thought.</p><p>‘‘Don’t go.’’</p><p>She turns, confused, smiles.</p><p>‘‘I’m not going anywhere, Rome. Because what we need to do, since we are the official leaders of your father’s shattered conglomerate now, is set a few things straight if we’re going to be the best at it.’’</p><p>She sets her Birkin down next to the bed, plugs in her phone to charge.</p>
<hr/><p>He did like the words, back when they were a surprise, thrown at him by someone he had no idea ever paid any mind to what he did. The game was afoot, and her voice and words became as addictive to him as a handful of molly to Kendall on one of his particularly bad days.</p><p>By the time he realized he maybe wanted a bit more,<em> a lot</em> more than that, they were already set in their routine and he just always assumed the words were becoming truer, for both of them, each time she uttered them, unable to stop being aroused, unable to stop being pained by them as well.</p><p>She strips without hesitation, never breaking eye contact and he sits back against the headboard, watches her, now only clad in her underwear, climb onto the bed.</p>
<hr/><p>It took every ounce of will power not to cover herself up, took so much courage to unzip the skirt, swipe the silk of her blouse off her body and open up like that.</p><p>He doesn’t waste a moment devouring her with his eyes and this gives her a boost of confidence.</p><p>She looks at him better, his slender form, pale chest, the larger than average cock, alert again, already leaking. She focuses then on his face, the deep, incredibly soulful eyes no one seemed to like to pay attention to. His high cheekbones are even sharper now he’d lost some weight he couldn’t afford to, the past half a year leaving a mark on both of them.</p><p>She straddles him, wastes no time, pad of her thumb coming up and sliding against his lips, into his waiting mouth.</p><p>‘‘We work, Roman.’’, she whispers now, against his forehead, as she feels him finally put his hands on her, palms feverishly grasping at her waist, pawing hungrily at her bra clasp.</p><p>It slides off amazingly quickly, and she lets him explore her with his mouth, like a parched man in a desert, his tongue works her heated flesh, a nipple hardening against his lips, the obscene pop when he lets go of it unbelievably loud, making her wetter.</p>
<hr/><p>He knows then, in that moment as he pushes into her eagerly, her delicious breath in his mouth, that he has never been less his own.</p><p>The incandescently bright heat of her makes a whine solidify in the back of his throat as he fucks into her, the mattress vibrating under them, his arms barely holding him up above her.</p><p>She moans out a plea, begging him not to stop, and he could never, vows to give her whatever she wants whenever she wants it, because he knows he was made for that specific purpose.</p>
<hr/><p>It’s the early hours of the morning when he wakes to the sensation of her warm body across his chest. He feels her breaths are uneven, knows she’s awake.</p><p>‘‘Good morning.’’</p><p>She doesn’t reply, and he moves down until he’s facing her, her sleepy blue eyes piercing, reminding him of her favorite Max Mara coat.</p><p>‘‘You scared me last night, Roman. When you didn’t answer.’’, she says, and he remembers there are still so many things they need to discuss, but feels all the brighter for the fact that she stayed, that she always does.</p><p>‘‘I know. I know that now.’’</p><p>‘‘I can’t be CEO without you.’’, she says in hushed tones before shaking her head. ’’No  - I very much can. The thing is - I <em>refuse </em>to be CEO without you.’’</p><p>He smiles.</p><p>‘‘I’m not going anywhere, Molewoman. After all-’’, he says, inching closer to place a light, morning-breath kiss on her lips. ’’We work, don’t we?’’</p><p>The feeling of her exploring tongue in his eager mouth is all the answer he needs.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The image of Gerri finding the bottle on the floor of his room wouldn't leave me be for some reason, so I just had to write this one out :)<br/>Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought! 💖</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>